Hacker News Reader

Comment by thunderbong | Hacker News Reader

Sorry, I don't get it!

"Turn that frown upside down" is a way of saying - don't be sad, be happy. Instead of having the corners of your mouth point down (frown), have them point up (smile). The joke is that if you move the eyes to the other side of the mouth, it remains a frown.

Expectation

:( becomes :)

Subversion

:( becomes ):

It's a very American expression. In British culture a frown refers to a forehead expression, not a mouth expression.

How interesting - I'm British, and I got the joke immediately. Yet, I'd hardly move my mouth if someone asked me to put on a frown. I'd never really thought about that one before.

Yeah, it's a well known expression, but it only makes literal sense in American English.

The implication is that if you are sad there are more associated tells than just your mouth. Imagine a clown doing a mock sad face and exaggerating sadness by frowning.

I've always felt this was a forced contrivance and never that anyone literally thought frowning had anything to do with smiling.

Oh! I didn't notice the :( and the ): signs. I thought it was a play on the usernames < pronto> and < korozion>!

And you never will!

Geez, the number of people that don't recognise bash.org quotes saddens me.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230401050146/http://bash.org/?...

The intended goal was to get the other person to reply :) by inverting the mouth. Instead, the whole "frown face" was inverted.

People say "turn that frown upside down" as a phrase to mean "don't frown, smile!"

But the poster flipped the emoji so it was a frowning face pointing right, then a frowning face pointing left

"Turn that frown upside down" means to smile, instead, :( to :)

But the chatter just flipped the whole face, so it's still sad: :( ):

Reply on news.ycombinator.com